What do you get when you combine UFC and WWE? A USD 21 bn joint company: Ultimate Fighting Champions (UFC) and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) are forming a joint publicly traded company, UFC owner Endeavor Group Holdings said in a statement yesterday. The new company, which has yet to be given an official name, “will be a USD 21+ bn live sports and entertainment powerhouse with a collective fanbase of more than a bn people,” WWE Executive Chairman Vincent McMahon — who will retain his title — said in the statement. Endeavor will hold a controlling 51% stake in the new joint company once the agreement closes, with WWE shareholders taking the remaining balance.
This is kind of a big thing in the world of wrestling: “WWE is considered a fruitful investment due to its broad range of appeal and large loyal fanbase, especially regarding social media interactions,” DW notes. The creation of a joint entity is expected to result in “significant growth across revenue areas including domestic and international media rights, ticket sales and yield optimization, event operations, sponsorship, licensing and premium hospitality,” Endeavor said in its statement.
Nostalgia costs a pretty penny sometimes: A first-generation iPhone (those came out in 2007, for those of you trying to rack your brains) was sold at auction for a cool USD 40.3k in a sale organized by Wright Auctions. That’s c.67x its original retail price of USD 599. The factory-sealed phone, which earned the title of Invention of the Year by Time magazine in 2007, was discontinued immediately after the iPhone 3G was released in June 2008. The phone is now functionally obsolete — considering it (along with all other iPhones produced before 2015) is incompatible with the latest operating system for iPhones — but it’s one of the “few tangible design objects that just change everything,” Wright Auctions President Richard Wright told the New York Times.